About a week ago, when my girlfriend woke me up in the middle of the morning, I thought that she had more pleasant things on her mind. “Shhh. Listen”, she said, “What is that?” I begin to hear an odd scratching noise, like a small dog getting comfortable in a beanbag chair. It seems to be coming from a point in my room that does not exist in Euclidean space. As I cognate that the little hand on the alarm clock is pointing at five, the sounds cease. “Hmm. Seems to have stopped,” I say, ”perhaps we could . . .” I make some suggestions with my hands; we forgot about that strange noise.

A couple of days later, I am woken up by the same sort of scraping noise. This time it sounds like someone is trying to cut through a piece of cardboard with a ginsu knife. It is 5aM. I am alone. I have already lost sleep, so I get out of bed, grab a baseball bat, and start prowling about the basement. I find the central heating unit, directly on the other side of the wall from my room. I tap on the pipes. I poke at the insulation. I hear the toilet flush, and one of my roommates comes down the stairs. “Hey, watcha doin bangin on things so early like?” she is generally very grumpy in the mornings, but she is concerned now. I walk over next to her and point at the ducting. “There’s something there”. Then, as if cued, It moves, and we heard it.